Comic Con Stash

My friend Amanda was able to attend Comic Con in San Diego this year. My sister and I were hoping to attend, but sadly were not able to get tickets. Since we missed it, Amanda sent us plenty of goodies from the con!

 First off, lots and lots of bookmarks, stickers, and artists' cards!

ARC of Curtsies and Conspiracies...............so excited to read this book! Also Fallen, a manga preview book, and a signed bookplate ;)

Comic books, lanyards, applique patch, and flashlight keychain ;)

Two tote bags.....my computer doesn't want to see the image the correct way.....LOL....

Buttons galore! I love how she pinned each one to the bubble wrap to ship them!

Anime, manga, Hello Kitty, and OUAT posters.

Yet again....my computer is acting silly. A MLP Fluttershy poster and cutout hats and crown ;) She also got me posters for The Simpsons and Haven.

Zombie bunny fan, Hello Kitty and Anne Rice cutouts. Anne Rice's new book comes out this fall.....can't wait!

The mega tote bag!!

>____< Believe me when I say that this tote bag is HUGE! I'm standing up while taking this picture! The bag features DJ Pon-3.........AWESOME!

Darling, thank you for all the goodies! Especially the goodies for my friends and sister!!

Until next time ^___^

Beary berry!

Pattern: Beary by Gleeful Things
Yarn: Caron Simply Soft Purple Sparkle and Limelight
Hook: Size G
Notions: 10mm safety eyes and light purple and black felt
Start/Finish: 7/26/2013

My finish on Friday night while hanging out with my friends for our usual anime night ..... which has been more Korean dramas for a while now :)

Until next time ^___^

Me Want!

Yarn: Caron Simply Soft Purple Sparkle
Hook: Size H
Notions: 9mm safety eyes
Start/finish: 7/24-25/2013

Our kitty Bella likes Violet the octopus....a little too much!

Until next time ^___^

Fluttershy Ami

Pattern: School Age Pony by Knit One Awe Some
Yarn: Caron Simply Soft Lemon and Strawberry
Hook: Size G
Notions: black, light and dark blue, white, and pink felt
Start/Finish: 7/1-21/2013

Finally, I finished my Fluttershy ami. I used a freebie pattern online, but modified it a bit. I finished up the pony itself quite a while ago, but procrastinated about the hair......with that part done, I finally cut out the eyes and cutie mark from felt today.

Until next time ^___^

Elusive Yarn!

I stopped by Wal-mart this morning............and I exclaimed out loud....."It's Christmas!" when I saw this color of yarn on the shelves. I'm sure any customers on the nearby aisles thought I was completely insane.

As you know, they stock Caron's brand of yarn including the party line of sparkly yarns. One of the colors that they have never stocked is their purple sparkle. And 'lo and behold, what do I see on their shelves this morning, but the elusive purple sparkle yarn!!! I immediately grabbed several skeins in my delightful state of yarn bliss!

Surely, I'm not the only person who gets excited when they see new colors of yarn.......>___<

.....sigh....what to make....off to seek some patterns.

Until next time ^____^

White Beauty

My mother's hibiscus flowers are blooming! This is just one of her plants......I wonder what colors we will see with the other flowers >___<

Until next time ^____^

Wandering in New Orleans

On Friday, my sister and I and our friend Andrew went on a mini-excursion to New Orleans for the day. We lucked out on the weather: hot, but with a breeze. You can't ask for better in the middle of the summer in New Orleans.

Our first stop was the WWII museum. As many times as we have been to New Orleans, we have never stopped at the WII museum. We didn't get to spend the amount of time that we needed to see everything at the museum, but it was quite an amazing museum. If you plan to stop by the museum, it might be a good idea for you to spend a few days in New Orleans. That way you have a chance to see everything in the museum on one day and spend the rest of your time seeing the other sights in the city.

Afterwards, we had lunch at Dat Dog......yum!

I'm not too adventurous when I first visit a place....so my hot dog was just decked out with cheese and mustard......but look at the 'white trash' fries that my sister ordered! Delicious!

We decided to walk off our lunches and went by an antique shop on Magazine Street.

Look at these lovelies.......a box full of buttons.........I love these German flower buttons. I didn't buy them despite the temptation....but I knew I didn't have a project in mind for them.

After browsing, we stopped by our favorite local sweet shop, Sucre.

Yummy shots of the gorgeous creations!

Speaking of adventurous, my sister is to some extent, but when she finds something she likes, she always comes back to it. Her choice at Sucre, CS.....cookie and ice cream.

My choices......yes, I said choices. It makes me sound like a complete pig......but I couldn't decide and wanted to try several of them......

The dacquoise rouge: macaroon, raspberries, lemon creme, and strawberry sauce. The macaroon beside the dessert is almond flavored......perfect.

Second dessert.....elderflower savarin: strawberry compote, passion fruit cream, and elderberry cordial. Quite a unique taste! But definitely worth picking out if you want something different.

Did I eat all the desserts I chose?...........no............I couldn't......LOL......but at least I got to try some new things before we left.

I found the perfect dream house on Eighth Street on our way back to our car.

This view of the lawn area caught my eye. As Andrew said, it reminded him of The Secret Garden.

Wouldn't you love to perch on a window seat in that room with a good book and cup of cocoa? View of a quiet street in New Orleans while reading to your heart's content......sigh....

1208, you are lovely!

Hopefully we can have some more fun in New Orleans the next time we stop by!

Until next time ^___^

Perler Fun!

Kristina and I weren't able to make it to the Artwalk......along with all other vendors.....the weather was terrible. Since then I've made several Perler bead cuties....

And I've organized my Perler beads. Beginners in Perler beads always make the wrong choice and buy the tub of assorted beads. Sure, you think it's great, but it really isn't when you need several of one color and have to sort through the beads to find them.

Woohoo! Organized beads......not the most excited task ever.....but at least it gave me a chance to watch a few Dark Shadows episodes!

Until next time ^____^

Artwalk Time........Say WOOT!

Hi, everyone! Tomorrow Kristina and I will once again be at Artwalk in downtown Mobile. We should be there around 6:30/7ish.....hopefully set up across the street from the Arts Council bldg.

We will have some amigurumis for sale along with lots and lots of perler bead creations leftover from Mobi-con. I'll have felties and cell charms....not necessarily on the table so if you are a local reader and you come by and want to see them just ask ;)

Also, you may have noticed that I haven't listed my snow bunny scarf in the Etsy shop. I'll have it with me tomorrow so if you are interested in possibly purchasing it come on and stop by!

All of this, of course, is subject to our glorious southern weather, which can be unpredictable. Keep your fingers crossed for nice weather tomorrow and that the rain stays away for a bit.

Until next time ^_____^

Giveaway Package in CA!

Good morning, everyone! I sent out the giveaway package on Saturday and it got to sunny CA yesterday ;)

Here is everything wrapped and ready to be packaged up ;)

Lovely goodies in the package!!! I added several crochet items because the winner of the giveaway, Amanda, loves to crochet.

Contents:
2 magazines - Crochet Today and Crafts N' Things
2 sheets of stickers
2 notepads - ice cream sandwich and bread shaped
2 spools of ribbon - steampunk and pink filigree designs
1 pack of flower buttons
1 Yarn To Go bag
1 Lindt berry chocolate bar (they have a new line of chocolate! Yum!)
Starbucks card

and

The little ice cream cone amigurumi. My dear friend has been complaining of the heat and her house's crazy A/C system. I thought that the amigurumi would at least give her some 'cool' thoughts to take her mind off the heat for a little while!!

So what would I have given someone else with a different hobby.........mostly all the same goodies except put in some magazines for that person's hobby and maybe some small kits ;)

I hope to do this giveaway again sometime! Maybe I'll get more entries >__<

Until next time ^___^

Bring Your Ami To Work Friday - Part 2

Balthier and Oliver are up to something................

...........sigh..........what am I going to do with these guys? I can't get any work done with them around. They like to goof off all day!!!

Until next time ^____^

EW Top 100 Novels of All Time

Ah, you gotta love it when magazines put out their 'top 100' lists of various categories. This week EW featured listings for the 'top 100 of all time' in movies, books, albums, etc.

You know me....I had to see what was featured as the top 100 novels of all time. I thought it would be fun to italicize the novels on the list that I have read.

1. Anna Karenina By Leo Tolstoy
2. The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen
4. Great Expectations By Charles Dickens
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
6. My Antonia By Willa Cather
7. The Harry Potter series By J.K. Rowling
8. The Rabbit quartet By John Updike
9. Beloved By Toni Morrison
10. Charlotte's Web By E.B. White
11. Mrs. Dalloway By Virginia Woolf
12. The Sound and the Fury By William Faulkner
13. To Kill a Mockingbird By Harper Lee
14. Crime and Punishment By Fyodor Dostoevsky
15. Ragtime By E.L. Doctorow
16. Jane Eyre By Charlotte Bronte
17. The Road By Cormac McCarthy
18. Moby-Dick By Herman Melville
19. Lolita By Vladimir Nabokov
20. Lonesome Dove By Larry McMurtry
21. An American Tragedy By Theodore Dreiser
22. Wuthering Heights By Emily Bronte
23. The Brothers Karamazov By Fyodor Dostoevsky
24. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By James Joyce
25. Bleak House By Charles Dickens
26. Invisible Man By Ralph Ellison
27. A Wrinkle in Time By Madeleine L'Engle
28. War and Peace By Leo Tolstoy
29. The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood
30. Native Son By Richard Wright
31. Blindness By Jose Saramago
32. The Catcher in the Rye By J.D. Salinger
33. Maus By Art Spiegelman
34. The World According to Garp By John Irving
35. A Personal Matter By Kenzaburo Oe
36. Atlas Shrugged By Ayn Rand
37. The Sun Also Rises By Ernest Hemingway
38. The Regeneration trilogy By Pat Barker
39. Middlesex By Jeffrey Eugenides
40. A Suitable Boy By Vikram Seth
41. Go Tell It on The Mountain By James Baldwin
42. The Stand By Stephen King
43. A Confederacy of Dunces By John Kennedy Toole
44. His Dark Materials By Philip Pullman – only read first book in series
45. The Color Purple By Alice Walker
46. The Age of Innocence By Edith Wharton
47. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle By Haruki Murakami
48. The Talented Mr. Ripley By Patricia Highsmith
49. Ender's Game By Orson Scott Card
50. Snow By Orhan Pamuk
51. The Corrections By Jonathan Franzen
52. Song of Solomon By Toni Morrison
53. Gone With the Wind By Margaret Mitchell
54. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk By Ben Fountain
55. A Fine Balance By Rohinton Mistry
56. Sophie's Choice By William Styron
57. The Children of Men By P.D. James
58. Midnight's Children By Salman Rushdie
59. Dracula By Bram Stoker
60. Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston
61. Love in the Time of Cholera By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
62. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn By Mark Twain
63. Portnoy's Complaint By Philip Roth
64. Infinite Jest By David Foster Wallace
65. Herzog By Saul Bellow
66. Howards End By E.M. Forster
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay By Michael Chabon
68. Middlemarch By George Eliot
69. Money By Martin Amis
70. Neuromancer By William Gibson
71. The Hobbit By J.R.R. Tolkien
72. The Remains of the Day By Kazuo Ishiguro
73. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold By John le Carre
74. Cold Mountain By Charles Frazier
75. Madame Bovary By Gustave Flaubert
76. The Golden Notebook By Doris Lessing
77. Tom Jones By Henry Fielding
78. A House for Mr. Biswas By V.S. Naipaul
79. Bring Up the Bodies By Hilary Mantel
80. Swann's Way By Marcel Proust
81. Frankenstein By Mary Shelley
82. Disgrace By J.M. Coetzee
83. The Stone Diaries By Carol Shields
84. Clockers By Richard Price
85. Catch-22 By James Heller
86. A Home at the End of the World By Michael Cunningham
87. White Teeth By Zadie Smith
88. The Bonfire of the Vanities By Tom Wolfe
89. Tristram Shandy By Laurence Sterne
90. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter By Carson McCullers
91. The Leopard By Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
92. The Glass Bead Game By Hermann Hesse
93. Bastard Out of Carolina By Dorothy Allison
94. The Moonstone By Wilkie Collins
95. The Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver
96. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler By Italo Calvino
97. The Big Sleep By Raymond Chandler
98. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret By Judy Blume
99. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy By Douglas Adams
100. The Joy Luck Club By Amy Tan

So what do you think? I have never read Anna Karenina completely. I attempted to read the gargantuan novel in high school but could never get through the first couple of chapters. Do I think it should have been given the number 1 spot? Hmm......I would say no.....I could think of more influential novels in the grand scheme of things than that one, but it does deserve to be on the list.

The Great Gatsby as number 2????? That one is a puzzler for me. I didn't enjoy the novel in high school. I blame the fact that we analyzed the book to an inch of its life.........and I don't find that a good way to enjoy a book. I don't think my classmates enjoyed it either......

Pride and Prejudice as number 3? I can see it in the top ten novels, but I have my misgivings about its placement. If Jane Austen wasn't so popular during the last couple of years I don't think it would have been placed as number 3.

I was glad to see several of Charles Dickens' works on the list, but was mystified as to why David Copperfield wasn't on the list.....???

Speaking of novels not on the list, why weren't these on the list:

1) Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles
2) Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray
3) Louisa May Alcott's Little Women

sigh............I could keep going...........

As you can tell, a lot of my italicized books are 19th century novels............sorry..........*cough cough*......I will admit that I'm more partial to that century than any other when it comes to novels.

What do you guys think of the top 100 novels of all time? Does it meet your approval? What novels do you think should have been on the list?   Until next time ^____^

Blog Giveaway Winner!

So much for a giveaway! Only one person entered to win..........Amanda from Crystal Panda. Which is quite funny because I had taken a picture of what the winner would get and sent it to her thinking I'd have more entries.........so it somewhat ruins the surprise O_o"

To answer the William/Wilhelmina question. One of my art professors was telling our class that William is an incorrect name for the MET's hippopotamus because that animal was female in Egyptian religion. Her name was Taweret and she was worshiped as the goddess of the fertility and childbirth.

End of lesson.......

Thank you Amanda for all the comments on my blog!!! I'll be sending out your package soon......with a few extras to make it a surprising package :)

Until next time ^____^

June Recap

Recap:

Read:
1. Somewhere to Call Home by Janet Lee Barton
2. Hell to Heaven by Kylie Chan
3. The Frontier Family by Lyn Cate

Crafting:
Amigurumis!!!
1. Tiny Whale
2. Roly Poly Cat
3. Wilhelmina the Hippo
4. Ice Cream Cone
5. Oliver the Octopus
6. Tony the Tiger
7. Kirby Ver. 2
8. Ellie the Elephant
9. Alien Bear

Scarf:
1. Snow Bunny Scarf

Until next time ^____^

Cooling Down in the Summer!

Pattern: Ice Cream Cone by YarnYard
Yarn: Red Heart black and buff and Caron Simply Soft watermelon and white
Hook: Size F
Notions: 6mm safety eyes
Start/Finish: 6/27-29/2013

The perfect way to stay cool in the summer is ice cream! I think I'll take what Balthier is having, yummy Starbucks ice cream ;)

Until next time ^____^